HU's Lacrosse Day to celebrate sport, Crawford's memory

Crawford was the driving force behind the founding of Hampton University's club lacrosse team, which began play this season and will celebrate Lacrosse Day, a four-team tournament at Armstrong Stadium, on Saturday.

After falling in love with the sport as a teenager, Crawford wanted to bring it to his college. He drew up a proposal and began enlisting fellow enthusiasts.

Crawford died in December 2010, a semester before his scheduled graduation and a year and a half before his dream became reality. But his presence will loom large as Hampton, Morgan State, Morehouse and alumni from St. Thomas More, Crawford's prep alma mater, take the field to play the game he loved.

"He probably wouldn't even believe that this has all happened," said Verina Mathis-Crawford, Mike's mother.

Mathis-Crawford took up her son's mission after his death from complications caused by an enlarged heart. In doing so, she came to share his passion for a centuries-old game rooted in Native American culture and sometimes called "The Creator's Game," played to bring honor to the spirit of the tribes and their surroundings.

"The sport is bigger than any one person," Mathis-Crawford said. "You're playing for something bigger than yourself."

That's a feeling the Hampton lacrosse players expect to understand on Saturday.

"It's definitely going to be a very emotional day," said HU junior and lacrosse club president Kevin Bennett. "Hearts are going to be heavy. The thought of Mike not being able to be here as we do this, even though he's still with us … it's definitely going to be a very emotional day, but I'm really excited for it."

Bennett, who played lacrosse for four years at Woodlawn High in Baltimore, Md., saw a flier on campus and attended an interest meeting at HU in March of 2011. He was one of 50-plus people in the room — a group that included Mike's parents, who were overwhelmed by the response.

"We were tapping a level of interest there," Mathis-Crawford said. "We just really nurtured that and helped move it forward."

Lacrosse helped Mike's family move forward, too.

Taking up her son's cause

Mike Crawford came home for Christmas for the last time on Dec. 18, 2010.

Riding home to Brooklyn, N.Y., with his parents after they picked him up at the airport, Mike, a sports management major, told them about an internship he'd just landed and updated them on the progress of his lacrosse proposal.

Ten days later, he died at his parents' home. He was 21.

"The only thing we were told by the medical examiner … was that Mike had an enlarged heart," Mathis-Crawford said. "How it became enlarged or diseased over the years, we'll never know. But Mike left us very quickly and very suddenly. He probably didn't know what happened. He died here in his room."

Even in her grief, his mother couldn't stop thinking about lacrosse.

"It was one of the last things that Mike and I had discussed," she said. "I began to try and pick myself up to see where I could move something forward that really was one of the last things Mike and I had talked about."

Mathis-Crawford, a former sales executive at IBM and a professor of marketing at Baruch College, part of the City University of New York system, and St. Joseph's College in Brooklyn, was one of the first people with whom Mike shared his lacrosse proposal.

"He knew I'd be the wordsmith" to help get the proposal off the ground, she said.

Mathis-Crawford has been much more than that.

"She has been so driven," said Ralph Charlton, the lacrosse club's campus advisor who also taught Mike in his sports management classes. "It's not an easy thing. They're completely unchartered waters for her. She didn't know anything about lacrosse. She has navigated lacrosse, the league that these guys are in, Hampton's campus structure and rules."

Charlton estimated that Mathis-Crawford has raised $25,000 for the club, which was officially formed on April 8, 2011, and played its first game, at VCU, on March 24. Among Mathis-Crawford's contributions have been reaching out to U.S. Lacrosse, which donated equipment, and to the U.S. Coast Guard, which provided uniforms.

HU competes on the club level in the National Collegiate Lacrosse League along with fellow Tidewater Conference members VCU, William and Mary, ODU, Christopher Newport, Longwood and Mary Washington.

Mathis-Crawford also Googled Lloyd Carter, the lacrosse coach at Baltimore's Northwestern High and a member of Morgan State's storied lacrosse program in 1981, the last season an HBCU fielded a varsity team on the NCAA level.

"After the tragedy of Mike, she felt like she needed to do something to kind of fulfill his dream," Carter said. "She called me and we had a phone conversation and got kind of emotional. At the end of the conversation, I told her that she called the right person."

Passionate about returning the sport to an African-American community he says can sometimes be overlooked by present-day lacrosse powers, Carter regularly drives to Hampton to help coach the Pirates.

"I put a lot of miles on my little car," Carter said. "I've traveled down there over a dozen times. It's something I don't even think about it. I just do it. I just love it. I love the school. I love the program."

'My life has changed forever'

Mathis-Crawford shares Carter's love for HU's team, though she is loathe to take any credit for its success.

"I was merely here in a time and a place to help execute it, to develop some relationships with folks," she said.

Those relationships have provided strength for Mathis-Crawford and her husband, Errol Crawford, as they deal with the death of their only child.

An example: Struck by the idea of having a Buick Lacrosse help represent the club in HU's homecoming parade, Mathis-Crawford contacted Newport News dealership Suttle Motors. The manager was receptive, and when she arrived to pick up the car, she was also given a check for $5,000.

"It's been things like that," she said. "Anytime I felt there was an obstacle or a dark day, something would happen I did not expect. … My life has changed forever, for many reasons. I live life now with such gratitude for so many people."

Mathis-Crawford hopes HU's lacrosse program will grow to attract athletes who would otherwise have to choose between the sport and attending an HBCU, and thereby continue to honor the son she describes as "a giver and an inspiring young person."

"It became much bigger than Mike," she said. "It will always be bigger than Mike. It will always be bigger than my husband and myself."

Charlton said Mike wanted not just to form a team, but to leave a legacy.

"I've been here 10 years and taught a bunch of kids, but no student has ever taken the initiative and followed through like he did to get something going for the students, and to have a long-term vision of it as well — not just while (he was) here, but an enduring impact on the institution," Charlton said.

Mathis-Crawford and her husband have helped that vision grow as frequent visitors to HU, renting an apartment in Kiln Creek to serve as a base in the area.

"When you lose someone suddenly, your life changes, especially if it's a young person that has so much promise," Mathis-Crawford said. "You begin to look at things very differently. You try and understand why some things happen and some things don't.

"… Have I had difficult days? Of course. But that's the journey that's been laid out for my husband and I. We don't know why. We'd like to think that we're good people. We don't know why."

Mathis-Crawford said she and her husband plan to gradually scale back their involvement with HU lacrosse.

"We know our son would not want us to be continually involved," she said. "… Mike's motto was carpe diem — seize the day."

Mathis-Crawford will try to do that Saturday, and she will appreciate the work that has gone into making her son's vision a reality. She will imagine what Mike would say: " 'We did it. We did it because we believed in something that was bigger than one person,' " she said. "So, belief and hope that anything is possible if you persevere. He was about persevering and working hard."

But Mathis-Crawford knows Saturday will also be hard.

"It will be a difficult day for me," she said. "I'll continue to look up and say 'Mike, job well done, son.'"

HU Lacrosse Day

WHEN: Saturday. Games start at 1 p.m. There is a community service activity at 10:30 a.m. A reception will be held after the tournament in the student center.

WHERE: Armstrong Stadium, Hampton.

COST: Game admission is $8-$10 and free to HU students. Reception tickets are $9-$10.